Just Don’t

There is so much going on with this movie.

It opens with a montage of newspapers: we learn there’s a hotel – the Paragon – owned by a mobster whose wife mysteriously died…in the 1980s. Now, I don’t know about you, but in the movies, mobsters aren’t from the ’80s. But okay.

Then we jump into the POV of a TikTok-esque watcher. We meet The Creepers: urban explorers who also do parkour? Okayyyy. There’s a secondary scene where a group member, J.D., takes a piece of a famous graffiti artist’s work in an underground tunnel, and the group makes a big deal about only documenting. So, they don’t steal shit, guys.

In an effort to gain more followers, they decide to break into the Paragon Hotel. No one who’s attempted it has returned, which means there’s a mystery afoot.

One of the many group members ends up being contacted by a Vice reporter after group leader Diane posts it on the video app. Whoops. So this whole group goes, takes the subway into the tunnels. They have to jump out of the moving train and run into the underground entrance to this hotel. A fuckin’ high-rise hotel on the shores of good ol’ New Jersey, as we see briefly.

Honestly, I didn’t realize it was a hotel at first. A lot of the scenes feel like the underground ones in Ghostbusters only much, much darker.

Already we have a bunch of moving parts: mobster’s missing money, a murder mystery (dead wife), TikTok urban explorers, a famous graffiti artist, a Vice reporter, a bunch of fucking rats, and a rival explorer group and their former group member…who then surprises them at the hotel. 

Once the rival gang shows up, shit gets really real. Real as in Russian Roulette real. These guys are like ’50s bruisers living in as ’70s punk rockers. Violent little shits. They add nothing to the story other than chaos and more victims.

If that’s not enough, the Vice guy isn’t who he says he is. He’s just a husband looking for his reporter wife who never came home from the Paragon. His wife’s heart was ripped out. Why?

Because they’re dealing with a Satan-worshipping human turned creature who rips the heart out of (some) people who enter. Diane wanders off earlier in the movie and eventually discovers evidence of a Satanic ritual: pentagram, candles, and a grimoire. I guess the mobster (???) performed the ritual for immortality, but it requires him to take the hearts out of people. One of them calls it a curse, so…I guess that’s just one more element to consider. It’s a transformation ritual, so Diane finds a wedding dress and meets the create at some altar where they’re going to marry. Only, she hits him in the head with the book and takes off. 

What else? There’s a tree with cell phones and cameras hanging from strings. Jesus-like statues hanging around. The creature is a tall, less freaky version of the creatures from The Descent. It has surprisingly nice feet given the state of its nails and teeth. It’s naked but for what looks like a diaper, and walks on its feet but runs on all fours—maybe that’s faster?—as we see from inside the video control room. Where there are modern-day cameras that work. 

Even the end scene is unbelievable. After finding his dead wife, Frank (the Vice guy) takes a run at the creature, taking him and the creature over the railing to plummet into the hotel lobby below (it’s one of those tall hotels that feels more like a mall). When they started to fall, they were on top of one another, but the creature gets impaled and Frank falls to the floor below. He’s still dead but he misses the spike, which makes zero sense in a horror movie. 

Fast forward to the future: a now very blonde Diane is driving a nice ride with most of the group. Rick whips out a wad of cash. They got away. Monster’s dead, they make out with a huge online following and some cashola.

Seriously???? There’s a happy ending? I’m sure it’s happened in a horror movie, but there was a lot of potential here that got convoluted. Too many plot points, MacGuffins, and other confusing shit that makes the movie confusing. I spent more time yelling at the TV than actually watching. 

My other peeve about this movie is that it opens like a screenlife film. There’s a spot in the middle where the gang finds Diane’s phone and watches the video on it. Then again at the very end. This movie just could not pick a lane, and it suffered because of it.